Maurita Corcoran, a Wellesley native and Wellesley High School graduate (Class of 1974) discovered the unspeakable about her husband – and then wrote a book about it. Fourteen years into her marriage, Corcoran’s husband, Brian admitted to his wife he was a sex addict. Despite the odds, the couple is still married, and though the recovery has been a long and difficult road at times, Corcoran turned her diary entries during this traumatic period in her life into a book called “A House Interrupted.” The Townsman caught up with Corcoran, who now resides in Myrtle Beach, S.C., to learn more about her experience.
How did you find out your husband was a sex addict?
Corcoran said she met her husband in college, and they dated for eight years prior to getting married. They had four children in the first six years of their marriage.
Her husband, a doctor who specializes in internal medicine and now addiction medicine, became quite successful, she said, and “I was very busy with the kids.”
But at that 14-year mark in their marriage, Corcoran noticed, “he had been acting a little bit more out of control than normal.”
“He is a thrill-seeker,” she said. “He always has to push the limit to everything. He started to get out of control, so I told him, at one point, that you need some help because I don’t want to live with someone who is doing all this crazy stuff.”
Corcoran said her husband went to see a therapist, who demanded he seek out a treatment center immediately.
“He wasn’t a big drinker, so I was like what the heck is he doing? Unbeknownst to me, he had told his therapist a little about his sex addiction –— without calling it a sex addiction.”
“This happened in the summer of 1997,” she said. “Sexual addiction wasn’t even spoken about then.”
Her husband phoned Corcoran from the treatment center and told her to purchase a book called “Out of the Shadows” by Patrick Carnes, and said he’d call her a few days later.
“In that book,” Corcoran said, “Dr. Carnes describes three different levels of sex addiction. The first level is prostitution, strip clubs, multiple affairs, pornography and internet pornography. The second level is more serious stuff, the stuff you can get arrested for, and the third level is really dark stuff that is off the charts, like serial rape and pedophilia.”